A little more on a podcast centric player

Michael Gartenberg | November 30, 2006, 02:48 PM

Dave Winer and Jason Calacanis talk a bit more about the idea of a podcast centric device.

A few more thoughts from me. Interesting reading the comments on both Dave's and Jason's sites about the interest in this.

Dave,
"First, did you think I'd really go for no RSS?" - I didn't mean to suggest no RSS, I think RSS will be a critical technology. The ability to read feeds on the go is a secondary feature and needs to be implemented in a way as to not ruin the core experience. Too many devices fall into this trap and fail as a result.

"Why should it have USB?" That's easy. It's a LOT faster than WiFi for transferring over and syncing lots of content, it can be used as the interface for re-charging via both an external adapter as well as plugged into a laptop while on the road. It adds almost no cost and creates huge benefit. There's still plenty of time when there's no WiFi around in my experience. And loading the first content on the device is a nightmare over WiFi. There's still a lot of PC centric content that folks have acquired, why not support it for next to nothing. Not to mention, since it's a USB mass storage device, users could use WMP if they want a Sync experience and no need to re-invent the wheel.

Jason,
Not sure why you'd need a storage slot. If you target correctly, you can get capacity correct for the most part. The ability to replace batteries is a big feature that right now both MSFT and Apple are missing for some reason. Running off common easily replaced batteries is a good thing.